Their literature.  In less than a century after the death of Mohammed, translations of the chief Greek philosophical authors had been made into Arabic; poems such as the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” being considered to have an irreligious tendency from their mythological allusions, were rendered into Syriac, to gratify the curiosity of the learned.  Almansor, during his khalifate (A.D. 753-775), transferred the seat of government to Bagdad, which he converted into a splendid metropolis; he gave much of his time to the study and promotion of astronomy, and established schools of medicine and law.  His grandson, Haroun-al-Raschid (A.D. 786), followed his example, and ordered that to every mosque in his dominions a school should be attached.  But the Augustan age of Asiatic learning was during the khalifate of Al-Mamun (A.D. 813-832).  He made Bagdad the centre of science, collected great libraries, and surrounded himself with learned men.

The elevated taste thus cultivated continued after the division of the Saracen Empire by internal dissensions into three parts.  The Abasside dynasty in Asia, the Fatimite in Egypt, and the Ommiade in Spain, became rivals not merely in politics, but also in letters and science.

They originate chemistry.  In letters the Saracens embraced every topic that can amuse or edify the mind.  In later times, it was their boast that they had produced more poets than all other nations combined.  In science their great merit consists in this, that they cultivated it after the manner of the Alexandrian Greeks, not after the manner of the European Greeks.  They perceived that it can never be advanced by mere speculation; its only sure progress is by the practical interrogation of Nature.  The essential characteristics of their method are experiment and observation.  Geometry and the mathematical sciences they looked upon as instruments of reasoning.  In their numerous writings on mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, it is interesting to remark that the solution of a problem is always obtained by performing an experiment, or by an instrumental observation.  It was this that made them the originators of chemistry, that led them to the invention of all kinds of apparatus for distillation, sublimation, fusion, filtration, etc.; that in astronomy caused them to appeal to divided instruments, as quadrants and astrolabes; in chemistry, to employ the balance, the theory of which they were perfectly familiar with; to construct tables of specific gravities and astronomical tables, as those of Bagdad, Spain, Samarcand; that produced their great improvements in geometry, trigonometry, the invention of algebra, and the adoption of the Indian numeration in arithmetic.  Such were the results of their preference of the inductive method of Aristotle, their declining the reveries of Plato.